Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo are emblematic of the current pop era, where pop stars don’t necessarily have to make strict pop music in order to earn broad acclaim: Eilish works a lot of alternative influences into her songs while a number of Rodrigo tunes are straight-up pop-punk. The artists’ innovative spirits has earned them the acclaim of a pop-punk icon: Blink-182’s Travis Barker.
Barker is the subject of a recent Billboard profile and in an accompanying video interview, he says:
“I like Olivia’s album, I love everything Billie’s done. I won’t say, like, ‘This is pop-punk.’ I’ll say, like, ‘This music that came out — let’s say like Love Sux, Avril [Lavigne], let’s say Jxdn Tell Me About Tomorrow, and [Machine Gun Kelly’s Tickets To My Downfall] — were all inspired by pop-punk.’ It doesn’t mean that it’s just pop-punk or they have to be categorized like that. Olivia Rodrigo is probably going to make an album that has a little bit of pop-punk influence and some other influences, too. Billie’s going to make whatever magical music she’s going to make and she’s going to be inspired by so much. […] You don’t need to follow the rules or keep it as sterile as the record label or whatever the rollout plan might be.”
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Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.